


Midnight Blows in Through the Window

by Cambusmore



Category: Addicted to You - Avicii (Music Video)
Genre: F/F, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 02:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4083913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cambusmore/pseuds/Cambusmore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As she lies there in bed, a bit too frightened to sleep, the wildness outdoors will reach a pitch and suddenly, midnight blows in through the window and the night is in there with her like a living thing. She loves it because it is exhilarating and she hates it because it is terrifying. When those footsteps stop behind her now, that’s just how she feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Blows in Through the Window

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Supertights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supertights/gifts).



> Dear Supertights, I hope this answers all your questions! 
> 
> Thank you to D and B, as always.

No one can remember a winter quite like this, not that you’d know it from the moth-eaten wool and rubber boots Becs wears, just enough to get her from home to work and back alive. Or at least it had been until yesterday when the wind froze the tears in her lashes and her eyelids clung together with every blink. She had never been that cold before, not in her whole life. It took so long for her to feel the skin on her legs again that she panicked and dropped a tray loaded with beers. Eugene had been telling her off for a good three or four minutes when sensation flooded back to them on a tide of burning pain.

Today’s a bit better: probably the same temperature, but so much less of that clawing wind. Even so, there’s nothing much to think about, except the weather and getting from point a to b. She has the radio to look forward to later, but that won’t be for hours yet. There’s little distraction along the twilit road to the bar, just lengthening shadows and white all around. She used to be better at this and not so long ago, without siblings or school or anything to do but sit and wait and conjure up a semblance of a childhood in her imagination. Becs needs to be good at it again. 

And just like that, she catches nature breaking the rules for her, right in front of her nose, the dusk's shadows showing blue instead of black on the lumpy snow. She’s certain she’s never noticed that before. Blue shadows. She squeezes her eyes shut to see if there are any sounds she can discover, more natural revelations to make the journey more bearable. There’s that sort of dim roar of the quiet countryside, maybe just the sound of life, God keeping them all sane because it would be so horrible without it. The crunch of her steps on the ice-glazed snow. And suddenly, nearing fast, the hum of an engine.

The yellow headlights throw a weak glow from behind her, casting the navy-blue outline of her body ahead. It’s quite beautiful to look at, but disappears as the car slows and begins to crawl alongside her. Becs does not look up, she does not stop walking.  
The squeak of a window being rolled down. “Pardon me, miss?” Becs turns to look, startled; it’s a woman’s voice. “Where can a girl buy some liquor around here?”

She’s young but dressed older and dolled up like a magazine ad for cigarettes, hat, scarf, thick camel wool coat. Her mouth is dark purple in the gloom, so it must be red in the light. Bright red. She’s glancing from the road to Becs, waiting for an answer or a sign of life. Becs could tell her about the bar, get a lift, spend at least part of her dismal shift having her to snatch glances at. But this girl is quality and the bar isn’t.

“Sorry, no liquor on Sundays here.”  
The girl sighs, “Well, that’s a shame. Nothing like it to beat the cold.” Becs trudges doggedly on, but the car just keeps gliding apace with her.

“You from around here?”

Becs gives her short answer, “Yes.” More often than not, it turns out to be pretty handy code for don’t talk to me. This time it's not.

“Need a ride somewhere?”

“No, thank you.”

The car follows along for a little while longer, but Becs isn’t sure if the girl is watching her or not because her eyes are on her boots. She can’t feel her toes anymore.  
“Suit yourself. Thanks anyway!” she calls and there is the shriek of the window going back up before the car, something sleek and new with a rounded back you just want to run your palm along, picks of speed and disappears past a dip in the road ahead. It’s much darker now than before. The exhaust hanging in the air stinks, but Becs pretends it’s warm.

***

Davey Junior and Jimbo’s burping contest attracts nearly everyone in the bar, except a few diehards playing darts to the death and Eugene who can’t be parted from his beloved cash register. He only ever moves away from it when he needs to take a piss and even then, he hurries back so fast, he’s still buttoning up. Sometimes, he watches Becs as he does it and slows right down. He catches her now, transfixed with disgust like when she turns over a rock and can’t help but stare at the squirming, skittering bugs underneath. He winks at her. 

Two hours down and two to go. It’s best to keep moving in a place like this, emptying ashtrays and picking up sticky bottles and glasses; the more she stays put, the easier it is for them to touch and grab. At least when she breezes by, they have to really work for it and pretend it was an accident when it happens. Jimbo burps so loud and long, Becs glances up from the table she’s wiping down to see if the shot glasses rattle. “Ow!” he yells in surprise and they all bellow laughter, spittle flying from their mouths and dribbling down into their beards. She can feel the sneer freezing on her face.

Even with her back turned, Becs can tell when the door opens because the drunken racket dies like it’s been guillotined. And she knows right away, before the clop of heels bouncing off the stone floor, before the one or two hopeless catcalls, before she can smell her, cigarettes and orange peel, exactly who’s walked in. It’s like on scary nights in fall when the ground smells like rot and the leaves blowing around sound like the rattle of bones, there comes a moment Becs hates and loves. As she lies there in bed, a bit too frightened to sleep, the wildness outdoors will reach a pitch and suddenly, midnight blows in through the window and the night is in there with her like a living thing. She loves it because it is exhilarating and she hates it because it is terrifying. When those footsteps stop behind her now, that’s just how she feels.

“No liquor on Sunday, huh?”

Becs turns to her; the girl's eyes are blue and angry. “I’m sorry, I thought you meant a liquor store.”

She's not buying it. “No, you didn’t." She shrugs her coat off, drapes it over the back of the chair and sits down.

“I’m cleaning this table,” Becs protests lamely.

“So clean it,” she says with a by-all-means gesture and so Becs does. Still no one’s really talking in the bar. If this girl gives a damn about that, she doesn’t show it. Torn between fleeing and sitting on the girl’s lap, Becs wipes and wipes until it’s almost a vaudeville act and she has to walk away.“Hey!” calls the girl and gives a couple of quick tugs - one, two - on her apron strings. “Whiskey sour, please.” 

When Becs comes back over with the drink, people have warily started up their conversations again, although the burping contest seems to have permanently disbanded. She sets it down on the table as gently as she can manage and directs a quiet “on the house” in the girl’s general direction. 

“Is that your apology?” the girl asks, her voice a little easier than before.

“It’s just-” Becs falters, breathes, finally properly looks at her, “it’s just that you're quite fancy and this place isn’t, so I didn’t think you’d like it much.”

The girl looks surprised for a moment and then she laughs and Becs catches sight of her little white teeth. “You think I’m fancy? This is just lipstick, hun.” She’s smiling now. The lipstick is very red. “You’ll have to make it up to me.”

“I paid for your drink.”

“You’ll have to make it up to me,” she repeats.

 

***

She comes in the next day, too. Just sits down and waves Eugene away, waits until Becs walks over to her.

“What’s your name?”

“Becs.”

“Hi Becs, I’m Clementine,” she holds out a small pale hand. Becs wipes her palm on her apron before she grasps it.

“Pleased to meet you, Clementine.” The hasty etiquette lessons her mother gave her kicking in nicely there.

“Your boss always give you the eye like that?”

Becs glances over and Eugene doesn’t even have the dignity to cease his leering. “Yes.”

“We’ll just have to see what we can do about that.”

“Why are you here?” Becs blurts out and somehow Clementine doesn’t take it as harshly as it sounds.

“Burlington’s a bus stop between the big city and nowhere and I’m still trying to decide where I belong.”

“You don’t need to take the bus because you’ve got a car,” Becs provides stupidly.

“Yeah,” she agrees and then something a bit sly creeps into her smile, “but that’s a recent development.”

***

And the next day.

“What do you want to be when you grow up, Becs?”

She grins before answering so it might seem like a joke if Clementine decides that it’s funny.

“A dancer in Paris.”

She doesn’t smirk, she doesn’t even blink. She just says, “What kind?”

No one’s ever asked. No one’s ever gotten that far because they were laughing too hard.

“Can-can.”

“You look like a ballerina.”

Becs swallows hard and shakes her head. “I was. I can’t now. I stopped for too long. I’m too old.”

“Can-can, then,” replies Clementine and Becs finds she’s lost her voice.

***  
And the next day.

“Where are you from?” Becs asks her because her accent is so queer, not that she should talk.

“The moon.” Clementine waits and then wrinkles her nose. “Idaho.”

“What’s in Idaho?”

“Potatoes.”

“And you.”

“Naw, I’m a potato, too.”

“No, you’re too pretty to be a potato!” Becs insists all too seriously and Clementine laughs so hard that the darts players complain to Eugene that she’s putting them off their game. He takes it out on Becs by growling at her to get back to work. Clementine spends the next hour glaring at him with a face like a thunderstorm.

***  
And the next.

“You can come get your tip right here, Becky!” Wayne shouts and kneads his crotch as she hurries away from him. They all start whooping like they haven’t heard him or Bobby or Jimbo or Edgar or Jack D. or Jack T. or Beehive Eddie say the same thing to her at least a dozen times each. “Aw, Becs, I was only kidding! Come back and I’ll give it to you for real, honest!”

But Becs is already across the room, wiping furiously at Clementine’s table for anything to do that isn’t weeping.

“This place is disgusting,” Clementine mutters, “Why do you work here?”

“I need the money. And you don’t have to come here, you know!” Becs’ instantly sorry for lashing out. If Clementine never came back…Well, it’s only been a handful of days, and she doesn’t know just how it happened, but she already needs her like food. You can live on water and air alone, but just barely. 

“I do have to come here if I want to see you,” she says so quietly she isn’t sure she heard right. Becs looks up from the table. Clementine’s a bit flushed, maybe from anger or embarrassment, gazing back at Becs steadily, saying she means it with the look in her eyes.

Even though there’s a whole bar of drunken pigs squealing and snorting around them, Becs has never felt this alone with another person. “Why do you like me?”

“You’re smarter than that question,” says Clementine.

“Am I?” asks Becs, a little stunned.

“Yeah, and that one, too.”

***

And the next.

Clementine calls in her favour from the first night they met, when Becs lied to her by omission about getting a drink.

“Walk me back to my hotel,” Clementine says, but there’s a bit of uncertainty around the words.

“Which one is it?”

“The Pearl Women’s Hotel. You know it?”

Becs smiles, “Yeah, I do,” and they set off.

It isn’t too cold tonight and it’s almost nice walking with her arm hooked around Clementine’s, even if she rubbed the fabric of Becs’ coat between her fingers and told her it was too thin. “I know,” shrugged Becs and walked on. She didn’t care tonight. This was the first time in years she’d walked without it only being a way to get from one place to another. Tonight, she wants to walk in this very place with this particular person for as long as she can. 

As they crest the hill and look down the sweep of Pearl Street to the waterfront, it shimmers into view in the sky above the lake, writhing curtains of glowing green, as alive as they are. “Good God,” rasps Clementine and catches Becs’ wrist, squeezes. “What’s that?”

“Northern Lights,” laughs Becs softly because she hasn’t seen them since she arrived in Vermont, about a thousand years ago. The child who’d left home was an altogether different girl than the one standing here now with a beautiful woman touching her, breathing in painfully crisp air. They watch the aurora squirm, so much stranger in its movement for the stillness of the white mountains and dark lake below.

“I keep expecting them to make a sound,” Clementine whispers. Becs laughs again, a few white puffs of frozen air. “It’s true,” insists Clementine, “it looks like they should make noise.” Becs wouldn’t have heard them anyway over the thud of her blood in her ears and under her skin. How had she ever been cold today?

Clementine turns to her, the watery green of the aurora playing over her face. She looks, Becs thinks, like a mermaid. She is still holding her wrist. Clementine asks, “Should I be afraid?”

Becs feels the touch of Clementine’s pluming breath on her cheeks. “No.” And she urges her lips against Clementine’s. She can’t tell who kisses first and who kisses back, but she wants to keep on doing it for as long as it takes to show her how she feels. Because how do you put thank you and thank god and I never not ever in a kiss?

***

When they get to the hotel, Becs releases Clementine long enough to hold the door open for her. “You coming up?” asks Clementine with a wobble to her voice.

It’s Becs’ turn to look sly, “I live here, in the attic. She rents the worst rooms out to the local colour.”

“Can I see your room?”

***

Later, much later, with the sweat drying on her skin, Becs takes a drag off her cigarette and holds it near Clementine’s face. She can feel the point of her nose against her shoulder and she knows she’s aimed right when the cherry flares bright orange in the pitch black. Clementine blows the smoke out of the corner of her mouth, straight at the ceiling. “I’ve got a question,” she starts a little uncertainly.

“Shoot.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but how does a girl with an accent like yours end up with a name like Becs?”  
She huffs a little laugh into Clementine’s hair. “It’s not really Becs. They found my name too hard to say, so they say Becs. I told them it was like Rebecca and they just kept shortening it until they were happy.”

“What is it really?”

“Rifka.”

Clementine doesn’t say a word for a while, but Becs can hear her breathing, feel the damp puffs against her neck.

“You’ve got a name like Rifka and you let people call you anything else?”

“You like it?”

Clementine shifts to one elbow and lays her hot hands against Becs’ cheeks. “I love it.” She kisses her like she’s made of glass. “Rifka,” she whispers.

And just like that, Rifka is herself again. She’d almost forgotten her own name until she heard it spoken out loud with love. It’s been so long. She closes her eyes against the prickle of tears just starting.

“What language is it?”

“Yiddish.”

“Where’s that from?”

“All over, but Russia in my case,” she hesitates then before she tells her, “I’m a Jew.” It comes out choked and quiet.

Clementine brushes the backs of her fingers across Rifka’s face and leans very close to her mouth. In the same kind of whisper, she replies, “And I’m a potato.” Rifka can’t breathe for laughing and she can blame the tears on that.

***

She crawls out of bed shivering in the grey limbo between night and dawn and stumbles down the hall on cold-numbed feet to use the bathroom. When she comes back, it feels like a miracle that Clementine is still there. She keeps expecting to find that she made her up somehow. Rifka stares until she falls asleep again, just as a few brave winter birds start to sing. 

***

The knocking seeps into her dream, slow and thick like molasses, and for a few too-long seconds, she believes she’s in Leningrad again and they’re at the door.

Clementine jostles her awake as she’s wrapping herself in the sheet and scrambling into the tiny closet. Rifka pulls her robe from the bedpost and eases the door open a few inches.

“Good morning, Mrs. Layton.”

“Did I wake you, Miss Herschel?” She’s craning her neck to see past Rifka’s shoulder, pretending all the while that she’s just adjusting her pincurls. It looks like she just got up herself, her worn pink slippers peeking out from under her housedress. The pattern makes Rifka’s head swim. 

“Yes.”

“Oh, so sorry my darling girl, but I heard some noise coming from up here last night and I wanted to assure myself that you were alright.”

“Thank you, I’m fine, Mrs. Layton.”

“Because I don’t need to remind you that there’s no men permitted beyond the parlour.”

Rifka smiles sweetly as she begins to shut the door, “No men, Mrs. Layton. I promise.” 

“Oh and Miss Herschel?” Rifka stops just short of Mrs. Layton’s foot against the doorjamb. 

“Yes?”

“Rent.”

“Yes, Mrs. Layton. As soon as I can. Thank you and good morning.”  
***

“What do you want to do today?”

“Sleep,” says Rifka, smiling with her eyes closed.

“Sounds swell.”

“Or at least stay in bed.”

“Sounds better,” says Clementine and bends to kiss her.

Heat curls up between Rifka’s legs like a cat.

***

“Why do you live here?” asks Clementine sometime later.

“This house or this town?”

“Why Vermont?”

Rifka reaches for her cigarettes on the bedside table. “Because my parents thought it looked like home.” Clementine pokes her and pouts until Rifka sighs, relenting. “It isn’t interesting. But she’s interested so she tells Clementine everything: summers at the dacha when the sun set past midnight or not at all, her fingers stained with beet juice while she helped Bibi in the kitchen, the fog wrapping around the thin birch trees that edged the beach, the purge, diplomatic purgatory, the ship, Vermont and tremendous relief, tuberculosis and the sanitorium disguised as a retreat, the funerals.

“Why can’t you pay your rent?” asks Clementine carefully after they’ve smoked a few cigarettes in comfortable silence.

“Because I’m still paying for the sanitorium. It was private and expensive. The state one was...I just couldn’t. So we ran out of money paying and it still wasn’t enough. Even if they’re dead, their debts are not.”

“You still want to go to Paris?”

Rifka wonders if Clementine’s been listening to her at all. “Yeah, sure.”

“I think I know how we can get some money. A lot of it.”


End file.
